A customer, such as a business entity, operates their data processing systems and the applications therein to provide certain features and functions to their users. In providing such functions, the customer's system generates data, consume data, and use services provided by other systems and applications.
For example, a service provider to a customer may furnish systems and applications that provide a specialized functionality. A customer's system interfaces with a service provider's system to utilize that specialized functionality in the course of providing the customer's features and function to the customer's users.
System integration is the process of enabling a customer's system to utilize a service provider's system towards this end. Often, technologists with in depth knowledge of the customer's system and the service provider's system are tasked with coding and implementing components that enable the system integration.
In a typical customer's data processing environment, it is not uncommon to see dozens of service provider systems from different service providers providing different specialized functionalities or services. Furthermore, it is also not uncommon to find different customers implementing their features and functions differently, creating data differently, and consuming data differently from a model used by a service provider.
To accommodate these variations in customer environments, many service providers implement their functionalities or services in such a way that they can be customized according to a customer's unique needs. The variability in customer environments, the numerosity of service providers, and the variety of customizations of the functionalities or services make the integration a custom implementation at each customer. Not only this, but the variety of skills and deep knowledge of each environment, customer data and functions, and services and functionalities available from various service providers require an ever-changing set of skills and knowledge that have to be brought together for each integration solution.